Defensive strategies are used by incumbent firms to discourage potential competitors from entering their industry. There are pre-entry strategies like signaling and fortifying defenses, as well as post-entry strategies. Signaling involves announcing the intent to retaliate against any competitor attacks. Fortifying defenses strengthens barriers to entry through economies of scale, product differentiation, and proprietary advantages. Post-entry strategies include continuous improvement to stay ahead of competitors, capacity expansion to utilize excess capacity, and introducing fighting brands to combat threats to the core brand.

1. Defensive Strategies for Market
Success
NAUMAN RAFIQUE
L1F09MBBF0018
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

2. Introduction
• Competition forces companies to constantly
engage in offensive and defensive marketing
strategies.
• Rivalry occurs because one or more competitors
either feels the pressure or sees an opportunity
to enter an industry or to improve its position
within an industry.
• Companies respond to competitor challenges by
counterattacking with increasing advertising
expenditures, cutting prices, increasing
innovation, and introducing new products.

3. Defensive Strategies
• The purpose of DS is to make a possible attack
unattractive and discourage potential challengers from
attacking another firm.
• Incumbents try to shape the challenger’s expectations
about the industry’s profitability and convince them
that the return on their investment will be so low.
• Incumbent needs to take timely action to discourage a
challenger from making any substantial commitment.
• Marketing managers and business strategists have
developed a number of defensive marketing strategies.

4. Defensive
Strategies
Pre-entry Post-entry
strategies strategies
Fortify and Cover all Continuous Capacity Defend
Signaling Engage
Defend bases improvement expansion position Introduce
before fighting in cross-
entrant brands
becomes
parry
established

5. Signaling
• Companies often use signaling to announce their
intention to take an action.
• Announcements can be made through interviews
with the press, press releases, speeches, trade
journals, newspapers, and other means.
• A defending firm can effectively keep potential
entrants out of the industry by using the threat of
retaliation.
• The higher the perceived probability of retaliation
and its degree of severity, the lower the
probability of attack by a challenger.

6. Fortify and Defend
• Higher the profits earned by incumbent firms, the higher
the motivation to enter.
• The inducement to attack can be lowered by reducing the
profit expectations of the entrant.
• The most common barriers to entry include:
 Economies of scale
 Product differentiation
 Capital requirements
 Switching costs
 Experience curve cost reductions
 Proprietary technology or patents
 Access to raw materials and other inputs
 Access to distribution channels
 Location

7. Cover All Bases
• It involve introducing multiple versions of a
product in terms of models or product types.
• Many firms carry full product lines to block
access to the industry by new entrants.
• This strategy is also used by chain stores when
they rush to expand rapidly and keep
competitors out of the market.

8. Continuous Improvement
• A continuous improvement strategy calls for a
relentless pursuit of improvements in
Costs
Product quality
New product development
Manufacturing processes
Distribution
• Through a continuous improvement
strategy, firms try to stay one step ahead of their
competitors and help protect their competitive
position from hostile challengers.

9. Capacity Expansion
• Manufacturing firms may build excess capacity
as an entry deterrent strategy.
• When a potential entrant realizes that the
industry has excess capacity and its own entry
will only add to the volume of unutilized
industry capacity, it will be reluctant to enter.
• Capacity expansion is a credible deterrent
strategy if capacity costs are very high.

10. Defend Position Before Entrant
Becomes Established
• Upstarts are especially dangerous if they enter
the market by breaking the rules of the game
with radically new products, or innovations in
pricing, distribution, delivery, service, and
positioning.
• Incumbents often defend themselves by
embracing and improving the intruder's
technology, attacking the upstart’s reputation as
a product reliable source of supply, and hiring
some of the best people of the attacking firm.

11. Introduce Fighting Brands
• Introduced by organizations to fight a
competitor’s brand that threatens one of their
major brands.
• Competing brands are typically lower priced
versions of the firm’s premium brands that claim
equal quality at a much lower price.
• It can be an appealing strategy because they help
fight off a price-cutting brand that is threatening
the core brand of the firm while preserving its
premium image and profit margins.

12. Engage in Cross-Parry
• The degree of multimarket contact between two firms
affects the intensity of rivalry and the extent of retaliation
amongst these firms.
• Competitors interacting in multiple markets are less
motivated to compete aggressively because of the
possibility of retaliation across various markets.
• Competitors have an incentive to cooperate since they
stand to gain if they allow their rivals to dominate certain
markets in exchange for similar treatment in the markets in
which they are dominant.
• Cross-parry is used when a firm that is challenged by a
competitor in one area chooses to challenge this
competitor in another area.

13. THANK YOU